Last year Nintendo fully acquired the animation studio Dynamo Pictures and rebranded it Nintendo Pictures. They worked on the cutscenes for [Metroid Other M](https://youtu.be/fW2T7HVvfCI) and did the [Pikmin Shorts](https://youtu.be/HEbPAXTYhcg). A lot of people thought Nintendo bought them to make movies, but they’re not big or experienced enough for that.
That said, Nintendo will probably want to eventually release at least one movie per year considering how many big franchises and spin-off franchises they have. Illumination has many of their own projects and would have to set them aside to make Nintendo movies…
UNLESS Nintendo “loans” Nintendo Pictures to Illumination for assistance on cgi and animation work, in order for them to be able to handle making their own movies and Nintendo movies simultaneously.
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by Jermare
2 Comments
Almost certainly, they have Dynamo Pictures to do CGI cutscenes for future games. Like you said, they aren’t at a level where they’d do full motion pictures, so CG cutscenes and shorts are what would most make sense. The fact that Nintendo sees a need to spend money on a company to do CG cutscenes, kind of signals a major shift in thinking at Nintendo and reinforces some of the things that we’ve seen in the Switch era.
Cutscenes are typically only truly valuable to communicate story, setting, and plot developments, things that old-school Nintendo thought of mostly as window dressing, but most other gaming companies recognize as an important part of a meaningful experience. Having a “Nintendo Pictures” company that they wholly own, means that they can keep the same sort of tight leak control for upcoming games, rather than contracting it out with a third-party company.
Of course, this is just my own opinion. But Nintendo has no problem with lending out their license to third-party companies to make full experiences with their guidance, be it games, movies, or merchandise; it’s literally how a good deal of their exclusive games are made. If they’re keeping Nintendo Pictures in-house, it’s because it’s for in-house projects that they don’t want leaking early.
They’ve worked on film before it looks. But their studios are small and employ just over 100 people. Unless they plan rapid expansion of the studios, it’ll be used as support.
I mean, it’ll cost a lot less to do those CGI Smash reveals in house.